This blog post is part of a series titled Taking the Lead: An Inside Look at Eskenazi Health's Leadership. Different leaders throughout Eskenazi Health will be featured, giving an inside look at their work roles, backgrounds, passions and even hobbies. We hope you enjoy learning about some of the exceptional leaders Eskenazi Health is proud to employ.
Betsy Vance is the chief nursing information officer at Eskenazi Health. Working with Dr. Justin Morea, the chief medical information officer, she oversees the clinical informatics specialists who are a combination of nurses and one pharmacist that operate under a patient-centric, patient-safety focus. They serve as the bridge between the various clinical departments and the Eskenazi Health Information Services (IS) and Information Technology (IT) departments.
Vance got her start with Eskenazi Health 20 years ago as a student nurse extern in what is now the Michael & Susan Smith Emergency Department at Eskenazi Health. She was hired on as a full-time staff nurse and returned to the emergency department to work the night shift. She then progressed to a leadership role in becoming the emergency department performance improvement coordinator, which transitioned to the emergency department clinical informatics coordinator. In 2015, she joined the implementation team for the new medical records system and two years later transitioned into her current role as chief nursing information officer.
While with Eskenazi Health, Vance has also offered her nursing services to other organizations. She worked as seasonal medical support for the IndyCar racing series for eight seasons. During that time, she traveled across the United States and internationally to places such as Brazil and Japan.
In her current role, Vance and her team work closely with clinical operation leaders to understand optimization requests, workflow evaluation and how to best match Epic functionality tools to meet needs. Because she and her team work with various units within Eskenazi Health, each day is different, but all have the same focus: to always work to improve the end user’s ability to take data, understand the information, and formulate knowledge and wisdom when delivering patient care.
Vance is also involved with the Indianapolis Coalition for Patient Safety (ICPS), a group of health care officers from across Indianapolis who work together to improve overall patient safety in hospital settings. As a part of ICPS, Vance is the leader of the Epic User Group and is a member of the Smart Pump Group, which developed a standardized practice for managing smart pump drug libraries.
In addition to her team, what also stands out to Vance is the sense of family, love and devotion that resonates throughout the hospital. During her time as an emergency department nurse, she was proud to be part of the crew that provided care to the sickest of the sick, and there is a sense of pride in giving this kind of care. In her tenure at Eskenazi Health, she has cultivated very close relationships with her colleagues and now considers them family.
To Vance, her greatest contribution has been leading the emergency department’s journey into developing a software system that improves overall patient care by digitalizing patient tracking and nursing documentation. Currently, she is developing strategies around the use of technology and patient care delivery models and forming various clinical informatics committees to help govern content and data management structures within electronic health records.
Outside of Eskenazi Health, Vance is a member of the Healthcare Information Management System Society (HIMSS), the American Nursing Association (ANA) and the American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA). Also, when not studying for her master’s program, she enjoys outdoor activities, traveling, reading and cooking/baking. On the downtown campus, she can be spotted walking her labradoodle, Gus, who is a member of Eskenazi Health Pet Therapy.